His rugby career ended in injury. Bill Gammell then followed his father into business, founding Cairn Energy with venture capital funding. The company had modest success with a Pennsylvania oilfield but really hit payday when an oilfield Cairn owned was revealed to contain more than one billion barrels of oil. Bill Gammell’s father is close friends with George H.W. Bush through oil investments and the two family became close friends. Bill Gammell, George W. Bush, and Tony Blair remain good friends.